Re: [DotGNU]Licence question about GNU and GCC

[David Sugar]

Of course, there are other issues to consider here.  Traditionally in 
free software (and specifically GNU) I do not believe we have expressed 
any opinion of how a given "work" is "used", other than to say that the 
work itself and any derivitive works must be free, and the GPL provides 
an instrument thru copyright law to achieve this.  That a free software 
"work" might itself be used under a proprietary platform, or even in 
conjunction with wholy seperate "proprietary" work is not an issue we 
could directly control thru copyright law, nor nessisarly do I believe 
even should.  Of course, if one creates a "service", made of "works", 
some free and some not, this is both an ethical and legal question. 
Copyright law itself does not provide a satisfactory remedy since it 
will not recognize any granularity above or below the concept of a 
"work".  What you suggest here would depend on traditional commercial 
contract law and licensing to achieve, and that is both weeker than 
copyright and subject to local interpretations.  

On an ethical respect, do we really wish to assert how a specific given 
work is "used"?  To do so is essentially tempering with so called 
"freedom 0", which is often where proprietary vendors that desire 
control will of course go first.

James Michael DuPont wrote:

> Norbert,
>
> I had a crazy idea :
>
> Lets say that you want to create a GNU only 
> webservice, that can only be accessed from other GNU
> software. 
>
> This is really the question of security, lets say that
> the licence says that you can only use it via a secure
> interface and you are not free to remove it.
>
> Then the secure interface only allows connections from
> registered GNU software under the same licence!
>
> That would allow you to disallow the usage of the
> software via the network from non-free software, once
> you are on the machine, the normal linkage rules
> apply.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Mike
>
>
> =====
> James Michael DuPont
>
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